


I'm Alright If You're Alright

by disastrophe



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Other, just a lot of babysitting and crying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 18:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9083461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disastrophe/pseuds/disastrophe
Summary: A week before Luke fon Fabre was kidnapped, he pointed at the Jewel of Gardios-- that sword which hung in the Duke’s hall like a hunted head-- and said to Guy, “This one’s my favorite.”  A story about children raising children. Pre- and post-game, and a little in between.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Here is my great big Guy-raises-Luke manifesto, now I can rest.

A week before Luke fon Fabre was kidnapped, he pointed at the Jewel of Gardios-- that sword which hung in the Duke’s hall like a hunted head-- and said to Guy, “This one’s my favorite.”

Guy, fourteen then, had seen the way the shine off the naked blade reflected in this Luke’s eyes, the way he looked at his father’s spoils and thought _conquest_ \--because that was the game the dukes played, that was how wars were won, that was what diplomacy meant to a child of ten. Luke wanted to be like his father in dangerous ways sometimes. He had a penchant for chess then and hated to lose, so it was Guy’s obligation to never win.

“Why is that, Master Luke?” Guy said, without looking at either the sword or his charge. He clasped his hands behind his back, his spine ruler-straight.

Luke stared back at him, scowling. “Don’t ask dumb questions.”

He knew he really shouldn’t, and seven years of biting his tongue should have made it habit enough, but Guy said, “Somebody died for your father to get that sword. Somebody died for every piece in this hall.”

Without so much as a breath’s pause, Luke responded, “Yes, but they were bad people.”

When he vanished that following week Guy was only sorry he hadn’t taken the sword from the wall then and there and done the deed himself.

 

Luke was brought back in the arms of soldiers. Guy and the other servants were made to line up to welcome the Young Master home, though the boy was swaddled in blankets and pale and the Duke shooed them all away after his own face went white, seeing the state of his son.

“Who told you all to be here?” he roared at them, ashamed of the thing that was his son, embarrassed of himself. “Leave! Return to your posts at once!”

Bad people, the words echoed in his head when he passed his father’s sword in the hall as he retreated. Pere gripped his shoulders and steered him away, back to the room that they shared.

It really only took the Duke three days to give up on his son.

No one in the manor knew in what state Luke had returned. Everything to do with Luke’s reappearance was hushed up until that morning, when the veil had lifted abruptly. When Guy had passed by his Master’s room that day, there had been no sign of the guard that had stood there vigilant since his return. So when the Duke summoned Guy before him, he could only imagine it had something to do with Luke.

“You,” the Duke said. “You’re to supervise my son. That’s your new assignment; I don’t care what else we have you doing.”

The word _supervise_ threw Guy. But he said, “Yes, sir,” like a good servant.

The Duke put a hand to his forehead. “I’m not telling you to keep the child entertained. It’s not a matter of playing board games. He needs assistance with the most basic of tasks, you understand? Talking, walking, eating.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and remembered to bow on his way out.

 

He went to the Young Master’s room with a bowl of oatmeal and two hard-boiled eggs the chef had passed off to him.

In the kitchen they gossiped: “He’s mute now, the poor boy, it’s trauma that’s done it.” “Could be crippled, even.” “The Duke says it’s his memory that’s gone. Head as empty as a flowerpot. He doesn’t remember his dear mother, even.” “The Duchess sobs and sobs.”

But the hallway outside Luke’s room was silent.

Guy knocked on the door. “Master Luke?” he called. There was no answer. “I’m coming in, Master Luke,” Guy announced, just in case.

When he opened the door, Luke looked at him from the bed, glassy-eyed.

“I brought your breakfast,” he said. “Are you feeling well?” While he waited for a response, Guy placed the platter on the bed tray, arranged the silverware the way he’d been taught. Soup spoon, sugar spoon, a plate for the tea cup, a plate for the bowl.

The boy on the bed did not respond. Guy felt, with a heat in his temple, an anger so sudden it scared him. It was one thing to attend to the boy during his playtime hours but quite another to be his steward. It made Guy burn.

When he met Luke’s eyes-- hoping to see that glint he’d seen that day in the hall to justify this sudden anger-- it was as if no one looked back.  
He remembered he was a servant in his enemy’s home.

“Do you need help with the eggs?” he asked, a little too quickly. No answer.

“I’ll peel them for you,” he said anyway, reaching over and plucking the egg from the platter. His hands trembled so slightly as he chipped the shell away with his fingernails, the little pieces falling to the floor. With every chip that fell, his anger metamorphosed in equally small pieces into frustration, irritation, all its lesser significant cousins.

The silverware clattered and Guy looked up. Luke had the bowl of oatmeal in his hands, but he appeared to be trying to look at the bottom of the container, as if something were hiding underneath it, with no regard to its contents.

“Wait, wait!” Guy cried, and dropped the egg in the act of lunging to stop the oatmeal from pouring out onto Luke’s lap. “Hold on, there’s still stuff in here!” He snatched the bowl, ceramic still warm, from the boy’s hands. The egg landed with a wet thud and rolled under the bed.

Luke made an urgent noise from the back of his throat, but didn’t make a motion to move.

Guy held the bowl some distance from him. “You’re supposed to use the spoon, Young Master.” Luke didn’t seem to understand this, so Guy picked up the spoon and made Luke’s fingers close around it. “This one.”

This boy was not the same one in the hall two weeks prior. This boy was a new, bumbling thing, and Guy thought as he looked into Luke’s absent eyes, his fist holding the spoon dumbly, that he might hate this fon Fabre just a little less than his father.

“Give me the spoon,” he said, holding out his hand for it. “We’ll have to do it this way.”

Luke looked at Guy’s hand for so long he thought he might have to pry it out of the boy’s grip instead, but after a moment more, he finally gave it up, undoing his fist as if all his fingers operated together instead of individually.

“Thank you.”

Then Luke smiled.

Guy stirred the oatmeal with the spoon and frowned, thinking about how Luke had never smiled with so many teeth in the seven years he’d been in the manor.

“Here we go,” he said, getting a proper spoonful. “It might be hot.” He offered the spoon to Luke, who looked baffled. “Open your mouth. Like this. Ahhh,” he yawned, and then felt embarrassed. Luke parroted him anyway, yawning too big. “That’s it.”

Guy fed him in silence like that for a while, leaning over with one knee on the bed. Spoon a mouthful to Luke, blow on the bowl’s hot contents, waiting until he had finished chewing: rinse and repeat. It was a quiet, needy affair.

The bowl was soon empty, and Guy began to pick at the second egg. Luke watched the pieces of the shell collect mutely.

“Here,” he offered the bare egg. “Eat this.”

Luke took the egg into his hands and then made a fist around it.

“Ah!” Guy said as bits of the egg squeezed out between Luke’s fingers. “Oh you were—oh, you were supposed to put that in your mouth.” Guy opened his own and pointed.

Unblinkingly, Luke observed Guy, opened his mouth, and moved his eggy fist toward it.

“No!” Guy snatched at his hand. “No, no. Not anymore. No eating that now.” He brushed Luke’s hand off onto the platter, pulled a rag out of his pocket, and began to wipe at his fingers. Luke squirmed. Guy scrubbed until the fingers turned pink.

“There, I’m all done.” He glanced down at the mess they’d both made, between the two eggs and the spots of oatmeal. “I guess you are, too. If you don’t tell anyone what happened to the first egg, I won’t tell anyone what happened to the second.”

Guy picked up the tray with the bits of egg and the empty bowl, stooped to pick up the egg he’d dropped, and went over to the door to return everything to the kitchen.

Luke threw his hands down onto the bed repeatedly, insistently, making a drum roll of muffled thumps. Guy looked at him and he looked at Guy, but neither said anything. Luke’s face was creased in an uncompromising frown.

“If you can’t use your words, Master Luke, I can’t understand you,” he told the boy. Guy turned and left.

 

In the kitchen, everyone came to see him at once.

“How was the Young Master? Did he seem well?” the chef asked as Guy brushed the pieces of egg into the trash.

“He was quiet,” Guy responded. “And hungry.”

Chatter. “Mute, most like,” the maid said. “Traumatized.”

“But with a healthy appetite!” someone else laughed.

“Oh, the poor Duchess.”

Guy put the platter into the sink and said, “I’ve got to get back now. I’m supposed to help Master Luke from now on.”

“Oh, do keep us informed, boy,” the chef said, thumping Guy on the back. “You might just trigger something in him—you played with the Young Master before all this, yes? He may remember you yet.”

Guy, who wasn’t keen on being remembered, said, “I’ll let you know.”

When he returned to Luke’s room, Luke didn’t look at him.

“Let’s get you out of your sleeping clothes, Master Luke,” he said to the boy, fetching a fresh set of clothes from the drawers: a loose button-up and a pair of shorts. When he turned down the covers, Luke shivered.

He picked the boy up under the armpits and set him on the side of the bed so that his unmoving legs dangled off the side. He took the night clothes off and guided each unwilling arm through its sleeve-- a process that took longer than it should have, as Luke seemed to be unaware of how his elbows were supposed to bend, and kept them stubbornly locked. Luke’s nose was buried in Guy’s hands as he did up the top button of his shirt, fascinated with the process, as if he’d only just cottoned on to the existence of buttons and button holes.

Guy felt nothing but irritation, especially when the boy’s clumsy hands went to the buttons after he’d finished, fumbling to undo what he’d just done.

“Don’t,” he snapped, and took his master’s hands. Luke’s dull alarm made Guy feel a little guilty.

He took the hands he had snatched and threaded them around his neck. He said, “Hold tight,” and squeezed the boy’s hands closed around his own wrists. He rose, and Luke held, his face buried in Guy’s shoulder. Guy slipped on his pants.

“All done,” he said. “Now you’re dressed.” He went to set the boy down and untangle the two of them from each other, but Luke did not let go easy, his arms still locked behind Guy’s head. Guy could feel him breathing into his shoulder, little puffs blooming through his shirt.

“Master Luke,” he said, more gently than he’d been at any point that morning, putting a hand on Luke’s back. “You have to let go.”

After a moment, Luke undid himself from around Guy’s neck, but he kept both hands fisted in the cloth of his sleeves. The down bed sank with his little weight as he struggled to stay upright. It seemed to be a great effort.

Guy frowned. He undid the little fingers from his sleeves, picked Luke up under the armpits again and laid him back into bed. Luke made a stubborn noise of protest. But Guy was stubborn, too, and it came from the same place as that sudden anger.

He wanted the son of his father’s killer to be a killer. He wanted to hate. He couldn’t hate this Luke fon Fabre who couldn’t eat or stand or dress by himself, who flinched when he raised his voice and only dimly understood the mechanics of buttoning his shirt.

So Guy tucked him in tight and Luke’s fingers fisted themselves in his duvet and he frowned hard at the end of his bed.

There wasn’t much care-taking to be done because Luke didn’t move very much, and he didn’t play and he didn’t speak. Guy would turn the boy over every other hour or so, to prevent bedsores, but he might as well have been watching the boy sleep.

What Guy wouldn’t give to be in the garden with Pere, which was usually where he was at this point in the day, when Luke had lessons or practice. He smelled the overripe blooming tulips coming in from the grounds outside. What absolute torture it was to sit here and be slowly convinced that his worst enemy was an innocent and not deserving of murder.

From his pocket, Guy pulled his penknife and piece of fontech machinery he’d been working on. It wasn’t anything complicated-- just a series of cogs and springs that spun and whirred when wound. He wasn’t skilled at putting them together, but it kept him busy, especially at night, when he would try to sleep under the fon Fabre roof but could not because when he closed his eyes, his father’s sword was still mounted on the wall.

He worked on it there for a while, using the tip of the blade as a screwdriver to tighten the tiniest screws and growing discouraged when the cogs kept jamming for reasons he couldn’t determine.

A bird trilled past the window and Guy looked up.

He found Luke was staring at him. Guy shifted under his gaze; he hadn’t realized he was being observed.

Luke drummed his hands on the fabric of his covers and gestured at Guy, opening and closing his hands. There was no real emotion to be found on his face. A blankness.

“What?’ Guy asked. Luke moved his arms in little circles, but didn’t open his mouth.

“This? You want this?” Guy rose from his seat and held the pocket knife in one hand at the little machine in the other. Luke tilted his head and open and closed his hands again.

Of course, Guy thought, it’s the blade, that’s what he wants, but Luke took the little piece of machinery from his hand instead and Guy felt as if someone had put out a fire in him.

Luke held it with both hands, testing its consistency by gently squeezing it, running his fingers across the smooth metal, the grooves in the screws and the protruding crank. Guy was immediately embarrassed by its sloppy craft in the hands of such honest and inquisitive fingers. When Luke had thoroughly investigated it, he turned to Guy with a question in his eyes.

“It’s,” Guy began, embarrassed still, “just a little machine. It doesn’t do much at all, really.”

Luke blinked. Guy bent over to reposition the piece of fontech, so it stood right-side up in Luke’s cupped palms. “You wind the crank--” he did so, “-- and it makes everything move.”

The box whirred in Luke’s hands. Luke dropped it almost at once, made an alarmed sound.

“It’s okay!” Guy assured him, scooping up the machinery. “It’s okay. Nothing’s happening.”

Luke scowled, holding his hands in front of his face. He scared at everything.

“See?” Guy cranked it again, and the machine hummed in his palm. “It’s not going to do anything.”

After a long moment, Luke picked the machine from Guy’s hands, did the crank like he’d observed Guy do, and then sat and watched the thing buzz around in his cupped hands. When it stopped, he wound it again.

Guy noticed the penknife still resting on the bed and pocketed it quickly.

  
The next morning, when Guy came in with the breakfast tray—scrambled eggs, two slices of toast—Luke dove for the spoon and held it tightly in his fist. He ate everything on the plate.

When he dressed Luke this time, the boy fought harder to not let go of Guy, not, perhaps, for some want of affection, but for the chance to stand up, to be upright of his own volition. He began to cry when Guy went to lay him down again.

Before he was kidnapped, Luke would have stormed off, would have pounded his fists, would have slammed doors, but he would not have cried. And here he was now, great tears rolling down his face because Guy was tucking him into bed.

“Alright, okay,” Guy relented, and promptly put him back onto his feet. “We’re standing now.”

Luke stopped crying like he was flipping a switch.

“Better go the whole nine yards,” Guy told him, and picked him up off the bed to put him onto the floor. Luke went stiff and his grip on Guy’s hands turned vice-like, but he was still doing more hanging than standing.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Guy said, lifting up Luke and then planting him down on his own feet, so that they overlapped. “We’ll walk together.”

Slowly, he shuffled around the room, taking exaggerated steps for Luke’s sake. Luke made a noise that was like humming the whole time, his fingers wrapped around Guy’s thumbs.

“Is that a good noise?” He wondered aloud, looking down at the crown of Luke’s head when he didn’t answer. He grew self-conscious suddenly at their closeness, the way Luke held on to him desperately, the way his knees trembled with the effort of standing, the way this small bright anger he’d always tucked in the pocket over his heart went dim now.

He lifted the boy so that he stood on his own two feet and then let his fingers slide away.

“Nnng,” Luke said at first, which was the closest he’d come to words, really. He windmilled his arms slowly, finding his balance. Finally, triumphantly, he stood straight and still. He looked to Guy for confirmation of his accomplishment, and Guy, unsure of what to do, gave a single clap.

“You, uh, you did it,” he said awkwardly.

Luke looked positively euphoric. He was so taken by this little victory, so filled with sudden confidence, that he took a step forward and then fell over.

Guy was there almost immediately, saying, “Ohhh, it’s okay, you’re okay,” and it was only when he was being fussed over did Luke really begin to cry.

“You did well,” Guy found himself saying. “You did really well.”

When Luke didn’t stop crying, Guy picked him up and set him back on the bed, and, kneeling on the floor, begged him to stop wailing. “Everything’s fine,” he told

Luke, but he was unhearing and his noises were ever escalating. “Stop crying,” Guy said, more forcefully, grabbing on to Luke’s arms perhaps more violently than he meant to. “Stop it.”

Luke hiccupped, stuttering to a pause. His nose was running all the way down his chin. Guy brushed his unruly bangs from the boy’s forehead, looking for a bruise, a trace of blood. There was nothing to be found, but Luke was still ready to cry, and he had no words to use.

“Did you hurt your hands?” Guy said, hoping to delay the inevitable. A shaky breath of air. “How about elbows?” Guy shook his arms, and Luke allowed them to move bonelessly. “Knees okay?” Guy moved them, too, and Luke sort of kicked him in the side at this. “I’ll take that as a yes.” Luke kicked him with the other leg. “Hey, watch it.”

Luke drew his arm over his nose, wiping all the tears and snot from his face.

Guy frowned, pulled a rag from his pocket. “Look at you, you’re all in one piece, after all,” he said, and scrubbed at Luke’s face, and then his arm. “But don’t wipe your nose on yourself. Your father would have a fit if he saw you do that.”

This advice went in one ear and out the other, as Luke wiggled his feet back and forth and took no heed.

Guy thought, _this would be so much easier if we could talk to each other._

He picked the boy up, balancing him on his hip, his weight ponderous. Guy took Luke’s hand, formed a fist, left out his pointer finger, and guided the hand around the room.

“Bed,” he pointed at the bed with Luke’s hand. “Chair,” he pointed at his own seat. “Desk. Book. Window.” For his part, Luke seemed to consider this all with a contemplative eye. “Got that? Bed. Chair. Desk.”

Irritably, Luke shook his hand free of Guy’s grip, squirming. He pointed at the windows and gaped.

“I told you that one,” he said. “Window.” He walked over to the semi-circle of them and pointed at each one. “Window, window, window.”

He had to set Luke down on the windowsill because he wouldn’t stop fidgeting. Luke banged his palms against the window panes and Guy, afraid he might break one, undid the latch and opened them up, bringing the wind inside and making the curtains flutter.

Luke beamed and looked around, bright-eyed, making noises with syllables he’d only just discovered.

“In-dow,” He said. “In-dow.”

“ _Window_ ,” Guy said, and, encouraged by this, pointed and continued to name things. “Tree. Uh, bird. Wall.”

“In-dow,” Luke repeated.

Guy sighed and said, “We’ll keep working.”

They worked on it while Luke ate his meals, when they played catch. When he put Luke into the bath, he lathered his fire-red hair and said “head”, said “arms” when he scrubbed those, and “toes,” when he scrubbed those, too. He was about to get to “feet,” but Luke was ticklish and he laughed and thrashed and everything was soaking wet before Guy even had a chance. He took a towel to the both of them.

Then he took him back to Luke’s room, and he closed the curtains so he might tuck Luke into bed when Luke said, “Gai.”

Guy looked out the window, shook his head and said, “No, Luke, that’s sky.”

“ _Gai_ ,” Luke insisted, and gestured with his hands for Guy to come nearer. When he did, Luke threw his arms around Guy’s middle and Guy realized what he was saying.

 

Pere would ask, “How is the Young Master Luke?” and made it sound like treason.

Stripping off his boots, Guy answered, “He’s helpless. Doesn’t know a thing.”

In the act of watering the plants he’d potted in their shared room, Pere glanced over at him with one wizened eye and said, “It would be easy now, wouldn’t it?”

Guy made a show of shrugging off his shirt. “Mmm,” he said. “I guess it would be.”

“Master Gailardia,” Pere said, but did not turn to him. “Know that I would serve you no matter your choice.”

It should have comforted him, made him sure, but Pere’s words only weighed on him. He ground his palms into his eyes until he saw stars.

“Thank you, Pere,” he said anyway.

 

Luke pointed out a bruise on his arm over breakfast, equal parts questioning and proud.

“Where’d that come from?” He asked the boy, who only gave him a little private little smile of his own.

He took the arm and examined it, the deep green and purpling edges, the stark contrast against the pink of his skin. Like he’d just been born, that pink. What made Luke ache, Guy wondered, what kind of hurt did suffer, was it anything like his own?

His pressed both his thumbs into the sore flesh, the tips of his fingernails disappearing into the boy’s skin. Luke squirmed and wailed.

“Mmm," he cried, attempted in vain to pry himself free with clumsy hands. “Gai, oow!”

Guy heard his name, like being called from the opposite shore through fog, and came to himself, releasing Luke with a start. Luke scooted away, cradling his arm and its bruise.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but he hadn’t taught Luke those words yet. “I’m so sorry.”

He reached out to hold the boy, to comfort him, but Luke shrunk back. Guy put up both his hands and moved his chair across the room and only then did Luke stop trembling.

For the rest of the day, Luke would not let Guy near him, would cry if he tried to move him from the bed, would howl if he came close. Guy shuffled around the room, feeling bored and guilty.

Over supper, Luke eyed him warily, but the meal was a little complicated for his stiff grasp, required a little maneuvering, a trained hand to cut the meat with the knife. Guy did it as carefully as he minded to, with slow strokes. He managed to feed Luke with only a little cajoling, and a lot of patience. Luke wouldn’t open his mouth, so Guy compromised by handing him utensils after he’d speared something on the end.

“I’m sorry,” he kept saying as Luke took the fork from him with great apprehension. “Sorry.”

Luke chewed, cautiously handed him back the fork for more.

In the end, Guy thought he might have been forgiven. And then he thought maybe he shouldn’t teach Luke to forgive so easy or trust so much.

 

The Duke would only want clipped reports of how his son was coming along. Does he remember anything, he’d ask.

No, but he can say his name, Guy would tell him.

Can he carry on a conversation, can he hold a pencil, can he read or write.

No, but he can almost stand by himself, Guy said.

And then he was sent away, away, hurry up and get back to your duties, and he’d go back to Luke and Luke would always be happy to see him.

“Uup,” he’d say when he wanted to be held. He hadn’t quite gotten his mouth around the syllables: his tongue would bend them short, his mouth shape them too wide. He was a mimic. “Gai, uup.”

“Okay, okay,” Guy would say, and pluck him from the bed he was bound to. They both smelled of the soap he used in Luke’s bath.

He’d perch him on the windowsill and they’d practice their words together.

“Bird.”

“Biyrd.”

“Tree.”

“Treeh.”

“Luke.”

“Luke!”

He’d laugh so that it would unsteady him and Guy would have to hold him up so he wouldn’t fall.

 

When Luke learned to walk, he wanted to run, and when he learned to run, he wanted to climb and jump and maybe do cartwheels, too. But the climbing he could do all day. Guy would lose him in the trees sometimes, when he wasn’t watching closely, and he’d marvel because how could he lose him, he was bright red and no quieter than a waterfall.

When he couldn’t find him, he’d have to follow Luke up.

“Master Luke?” he called, heaving himself arm over arm through the thicket of branches, most of which looked too spindly to support him but just right, perhaps, for Luke. “Are you up here?”

“Guy’s loud,” Luke told him, imperiously looking down at him, nestled in a v-shape arc of trunk.

“Ha, and you’re a quiet as mouse,” he wheezed as he pulled himself up next to Luke.

“Loud and _slow_ ,” Luke said, and then pointed. “Wassat?”

“What’s that,” Guy corrected, because lately he’d been catching some grief from Duke Fabre about Luke’s sentence structure.

Luke rolled his eyes and overpronounced, “What’s that?”, the t’s like little darts.

From up there, they could see out over the gates, down into Baticul proper. They could see the steep slopes of cobblestone road, people in miniature walking along them, the palace gleaming in the strong sunlight.

He said, “That’s Baticul, the capital. That’s what’s outside the manor.”

“Wanna go.”

Guy spared a glance towards him, then looked back out at the view. The Duke was emphatic about this point. Under no circumstances, he said, is Luke allowed to leave the manor. House arrest, by order of the king. For his safety. His protection. Not even to the grocer, Guy found himself asking, not even to the palace? Duke Fabre looked weary at his suggestion, said, He will not cross that gate. Then, as an afterthought, Until he comes of age.

So Guy said, “Maybe tomorrow,” even though there was no such promise he could keep.

Luke beamed.

The following morning, Luke had his shoes on before Guy could even get him to eat breakfast.

“Wanna go,” he said, and pointed towards the thicket of trees they had climbed, out past the gate.

“Ah,” Guy said, holding the breakfast platter and standing in the doorway. “Master Luke, you…I can’t take you outside.”

“You said.”

“I said maybe. You know what maybe means.”

“You said!”

“You can’t go outside the manor, Luke.”

Luke glared at him. Guy looked plaintively back. There wasn’t a compromise to be reached. There was no leaving.

Guy said, “I’m sorry. It’s to keep you safe. I know that it’s—“

Luke rushed out the door right past him and Guy, handicapped by the tray in his hands, could not immediately follow. He hurried to drop the platter down onto

Luke’s desk, which clattered as the juice tipped over, but he was out the door before he could see the damage.

Belting for the copse of trees by the front gate, Guy saw the flash of red hair that meant Luke was already up the tallest one, and took pursuit.

“Master Luke,” he called, scrambling up the branches after him, “You can’t leave the manor, there’s just nothing for it—“

But Luke was rocketing through the splintered branches and didn’t hear a thing or, if he did, he pretended not to. Guy heard twigs snapping. Luke was inching towards the outer branches, the ones that butted up against the outer wall, the ones that were much too thinning to support anything heavier than a chickadee.

Was he trying to scale the wall, planning to drop down on the other side? And then what?

“Luke, stop, you’re not going to—“

The cracking branches might as well have been thunder in his ears, and Luke fell away with them still in his fists, landing somewhere in the bushes down below.

Guy, seven or eight feet up in the tree, let himself drop the whole way down, touched the ground, and stumbled over to where Luke had landed.

Luke had leaves in his hair and a hitch in his breath when Guy got to him, picked up him, turned him over, made sure he was all in one piece. He was crying, but he didn’t make a sound. He bled from two knuckles on his right hand.

Guy said, “Are you alright?”

Luke sat in his lap and sucked air through his nose.

“Hey,” he said, and cupped Luke’s face to better see it, thumbed away tears. “Let me know you’re okay.”

Luke squeezed out more tears through his scrunched-up face and wouldn’t open his eyes. He cried and Guy held him and they sat like that for a while until Luke found his breath.

“…are you mad at me?” he asked first. Luke’s gums were bloody; he must have clenched his teeth when he hit the ground. He had lost a tooth, maybe.

“I’m not mad.” He wondered why he wasn’t. “Let’s get you back and patch you up.”

Luke made an assenting noise. He went still in Guy’s arms, latched onto his shirt as Guy lifted the boy gently upwards. Guy’s legs hurt from the fall but he walked steady.

Inside, Guy confirmed that Luke had, indeed, lost a baby tooth. Luke kept spitting red slugs of spit on the floor and saying that it tasted bad. Guy went to the kitchen, grabbed a glass of water for him, and when he returned, Luke was throwing his shoes across the room. They fell in opposite corners.

Dabbing iodine on the scratches, Guy told Luke that he was being very patient, very brave, because he hadn’t cried or whined at the sting. He bandaged the knuckles, said, “How do you feel?”

Luke mumbled, “Feel fine.”

“I feel fine,” Guy corrected.

“I feel _fine_ ,” Luke repeated, too loudly. “But,” he said after another moment, and held his own hand. “Ow.”

“That’s not fine.”

“Why can’t I go out?” Luke asked him guilelessly.

Guy struggled to come up with an answer. “It’s safer in here.”

“ _Boring_ in here.”

Guy smiled. “Yeah, it gets a little stuffy, doesn’t it.” He thought of something. “Hold on. I’ll be right back.”

From the drawers of the desk in his room, Guy removed a staple of travel brochures, guides, and flyers. He’d been collecting. He stuffed them all into his vest, tucked them under his armpit, because most of them were emblazoned with Malkuth’s name.

He spread the documents onto Luke’s floor and sat, cross-legged, in front of them.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re going to plan our trip.”

Luke narrowed his eyes like he wasn’t sure he wanted to believe Guy, but he slid off the bed and scooted on the floor towards him and his circle of papers.

“What’s this?” Luke asked.

Guy pointed to a bright green brochure, earthy and dog-eared. “This is Aramis Spring. The water’s crystal clear there, everything’s green all year ‘round.”

“Whoa,” Luke thumbed the paper. “Where is it? Over the gate?”

“Over the gate and across the ocean a bit,” Guy laughed. “Northwest.” He pointed up, and then to the left. Luke looked where his finger directed him, as if he could see it. “Near Daath.” He shuffled some papers around and found one for Daath, big letters about Pilgrimages that he knew Luke couldn’t understand but didn’t ask about. The spires rose like the tallest trees in the little images, a setting sun dwarfed by the cathedral.

Luke gawped.

“Wanna go?” Guy asked him.

Like nothing else in the world, said Luke’s shining eyes. The skin underneath them was red and puffy. “Can we?”

“Sure we can, when you’re all grown up and you can leave the manor.”

“When’s that?”

“When you turn twenty, or so.”

“That’s so old.”

“Twenty’s not that old!”

“Twenty’s ancient.” He picked up another brochure. “Where’s this?”

Guy took it from his hands. “Engeve? That’s in Malkuth.” He waited for a reaction, but he got none. “We could…go there.”

“I wanna go there.” Luke looked at the rolling farmlands, the assorted vegetables in stands on the paper. “It looks nice.”

“Okay, well, we’ll put that on the list.”

And he wondered how much he was saying what he was just to mollify this child, who smiled a bloody smile at him and held a thick packet in both his hands, the words he couldn’t read saying A VISIT TO GRAND CHOKMAH. How much was he promising just to give the boy less to cry about? He had made a mistake in thinking so far ahead in time. He’d given Luke a presence, even imaginary, in his own future. He had planned to cut that life short. Could he still do that? Could he feel the rage behind his eyes, so sharp he could cut Luke’s throat with it?

Guy lay down so that his stomach touched the floor and he propped himself up by his elbows. Like this, he and Luke were at eye-level with one another. Luke turned to him.

“I’ll be twenty, so how old will you be?”

“Twenty-four.”

Luke bared his teeth. “So old!”

“What, no. I’ll be young and spry.” He had to stretch for a pamphlet. “Here’s where I want to go. Belkend, city of machines.”

Luke scrunched up his nose. He said, “Fontech.”

Guy sniffed theatrically. “One day you’ll understand.”

Luke stood up, shuffled around to Guy’s side, and then sat on him. He said, “Okay. We can go there, too, if that’s where you want to go.”

“That’s awful kind of you, Master Luke,” Guy said, wheezing under the boy’s weight. “It’d be more sincere if you weren’t _sitting on me_.” Luke made like he was going to stand up and then sat back down. “Uuugh!”

Luke laughed. Guy could hear him turning pages behind his head.

“Hey Guy.”

“Yup.”

“Will you still be here when I’m twenty and you’re twenty-four?”

He twisted around to look Luke in the eye, but could only see his messy bangs, his bandaged knuckles. “If you want me to be.”

 

Luke would get these headaches.

Terrible migraines that started at the root of Luke’s skull and travelled all the way up until his entire head throbbed with one, indistinguishable hurt. He wailed, he

keened. Kicked his legs, bit his tongue, passed out.

The first time Luke had one of these headaches, Natalia had only just left from one of her visits. Guy tried hard not to make a point of connecting the two, because the princess was a very honest girl, and he could tell by the relentless way she’d tutor Luke that she missed-- probably more than his father, and certainly more than Guy himself-- the boy that Luke used to be.

“It’s Ba _ti_ cul,” she’d say, and point at the words Luke couldn’t read in her books. “It’s where we live, Luke, honestly.”

“Bat-cul,” Luke would tell her and then groused around his room. “Natalia loud!”

This, being an improvement on “Go away!”, seemed to please Natalia in some small way and she left somewhat brighter than she had been.

Guy bowed to her on the way out, and she looked at him and said, “Work on that with him, won’t you?”

Luke was in a bad mood, and sat at his desk with his knees drawn up to his chest, arms folded.

“Her Highness is taking the time to visit you; don’t look so sour,” he put a hand on Luke’s head, patted twice. “She just wants you to get better.”

Luke grunted into the desk, picked up on the books Natalia had left him and turned pages for a while. Guy shrugged, shook his head, and busied himself with tidying the snacks the maids had left.

He heard Luke take a sharp breath of air and the book fall onto the desk.

“Luke?”

When he looked back, Luke had thrown his hands over his head. He hiccuped a noise in between a sob and and a wail, and Guy was by his shoulder in an instant, asking what was wrong.

“Hurts,” Luke supplied unhelpfully. One hand gripped the edge of the desk.

“What hurts?” Guy asked him, hands hovering, not quite certain if he should touch.

But Luke just cried and rocked.

“Hold on,” Guy said, “I’m going to get someone.”

Luke turned his head so that Guy could see one shining eye, brimming with tears. He shook his head, choked on another sob.  
Guy left the room without looking back.

He got as to the Duke’s room and then stopped. A coldness settled in his ribcage, his heartbeat in his ears-- wasn’t this the opportunity he was waiting for? Luke could barely walk; he wasn’t going anywhere. He couldn’t tell anyone Guy hadn’t, for instance, done as a truly devoted servant might and fetch help. He couldn’t say much to anyone.

He stepped away from the Duke’s door and walked back the way he came. Yes, this was precisely what he wanted: a moment of weakness, a chance to reveal in pain that wasn’t his. Why hadn’t he thought of it right away?

By the time Guy had made it back to Luke’s room, Luke had sunk to the floor. He did not wail, as he did when, say, he wasn’t in the mood for a bath or didn’t want to study, but simpered and rocked and held his head in a vice.

Guy closed the door behind him, turned out the lights.

“Luke,” he said, gently, dropping to his knees and grabbing onto the smaller boy’s arm. “Shhh, Luke, it’s okay.”

Luke stirred, breathed unsteadily, and said into the floor, “You left.”

Guy swallowed the burning guilt in his throat, wrapped his arm around Luke’s small frame. “I’m sorry.”

 

The second time, Duke Fabre called in the doctor. He couldn’t find anything wrong with him physically. Probably to do with trauma, he had said, Traumatic experiences cause unexpected repercussions.

How was his memory, the doctor asked.

Duke Fabre looked to Guy.

He doesn’t remember anything before the kidnapping, Guy told him.

He should make a practice of journaling, the doctor said. It may help to trigger something, could be therapeutic.

But that meant Guy needed to teach him to write.

“Did I do them good?” Luke showed Guy his alphabets, scrawled untidily but not, he thought, unrecognizably.

“You did them good,” Guy confirmed. “But you’re using the wrong hand.” He pointed to Luke’s left, with which he held the pencil.

“I like this,” Luke dismissed, and penciled another set of alphabets.

Guy frowned. Luke had always been right-handed. There were stranger things, he supposed.

Luke filled his journals with big, boisterous letters, and eventually, his unruly scrawl landed between the lines, settled down, tamed itself.

“How am I supposed to write every day?” Luke would bemoan regularly. “There’s nothing to write about.”

“You should write about what you want to do, then,” Guy told him, leaning over the chair to his desk, where the boy practiced. “You know, in the future.”

Luke looked pensive and then said, “’K.”

Guy brought the journals to Duke Fabre once, when he requested to see them. A progress report. How was he measuring up to the boy he once had been.

“At least he can do this much,” the Duke sighed, leafing through them. “I can now proudly say my son is not an illiterate.”

Guy remembered his anger then.

 

Ramdas stopped Guy in the hallway as he was coming back from an errand, one arm full of groceries for the chef and the other linens for the maids.

“Master Luke needs your supervision,” he told Guy, taking the items from him. “Please attend to him.”

He tried not to run. Two or three maids stood outside the door to Luke’s room, and he was alarmed to find one of them soaking wet. When he approached, they seemed all too happy to turn the situation over to him.

“What happened?” Guy asked.

“The Young Master is having a bit of a tantrum,” one described underwhelmingly, dabbing at the dripping blouse of the other. “He’s, well, he’s barricaded himself in his room.”

Guy tried the door. It opened about an inch and stuck fast, meeting some unseen resistance. Guy bid the maids away, because after all, he said, Luke was his to look after. Sorry. You know he gets like this.

The window was closed when he slunk around the back, but Guy knew the trick to it, and he slid his penknife upwards to undo the latch from the outside. The window opened silently.

Luke’s room was a disaster: the meal tray was upturned and leaned against the wall, an empty glass beside it, the contents of which Guy imagined to be soaking the maid’s blouse. A plate was in three pieces on the floor, what was left of the meal lying on the carpet coldly. Luke had swept everything off his desk, pulled the covers off his bed. The reason the door wouldn’t open is because he had upturned a chair in front of it.

“Master Luke,” Guy called out cautiously, opening the window a little wider. “You in here?”

A plate sailed at him. He ducked just as it shattered against the window frame, though it was nowhere near his head. A ceramic fallout dusted the sill.

“Hey!” Guy shouted into the room. “What are you doing?”

“Go away!” Luke shouted from the corner.

“Why are you terrorizing the maids?” He lifted himself onto the window sill, picking around ceramic shards. “What happened?”

“I said go away!” Luke yelled again, jumping up and running to the window. He shoved at Guy, who only just managed to catch himself from falling backwards by grabbing onto the window frame.

“Whoa, watch it!” Guy said. Luke was trying to pry his fingers away. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

When he couldn’t get Guy’s fingers to release the window frame, he shoved at his chest, heaved his knees. Luke huffed and grunted and refused to explain himself.

“Knock it off,” Guy snapped. “Just tell me what happened, we can clean up and we don’t have to make a big deal out of this—“

Luke grabbed a fistful of Guy’s shirt, pulled him forward and then pitched him back. He lost his grip on the window frame and fell backwards, banging his forearm on the sill before hitting his head on the ground. He heard the window slam shut.

Guy gave himself a handful of dazed seconds before picking himself off the ground. Luke was standing with his head bowed, both of his arms holding the panes closed so that he couldn’t open them again. He put all his weight into keeping Guy out.

Guy’s head gonged, his teeth rang.

Smarting, he spat, “You sure are a terror, Luke.”

The window wasn’t so thick that Luke could not hear him, though he played deaf. Neither of them moved. Guy could feel the knot forming on his head, right behind his ear. Colors were suddenly too bright. He closed his eyes and he could still see them.

He said quietly, “Maybe I should have killed you.”

Luke may have heard. Guy wanted this to be a shock, wanted some reaction, any reaction at all, but Luke stood with his head bowed and still.

“Suit yourself,” Guy finally said. He hit the window with an open palm. Luke shuddered on the other side of the blow. “You don’t want me, I’ll leave.”

He went to the kitchen, chipped some ice from the ice box, folded it into a rag, and hissed when he pressed it against his head. The cold seemed to travel all the way down his spine. He stood there in the kitchen for a long while.

Pere was pulling weeds when he returned to the courtyard. Guy asked him if he cared for any help.

“Master Luke is occupied?” he asked, a humor in his voice that suggested he knew.

Guy grunted. His head still throbbed. “That’s a word for it.”

“He is growing up to be quite the personality, isn’t he,” Pere laughed.

“He throws a tantrum like nobody else I’ve seen,” Guy stooped to pull a particularly tenacious weed from its roots. “And what does he expect me to do when he doesn’t tell me why he’s angry? I can’t understand him.”

“The Duchess paid him a visit while you stepped out,” Pere said offhandedly.

Guy frowned and looked at Pere, who worked without comment.

It was getting dark. Pere retired himself, giving Guy a pat on the shoulder before he hefted the bundle of pulled weeds away.

Luke had still not come out of his room. Guy sat below the windows around the back of Luke’s room where he couldn’t be seen and shivered. He could hear noises from inside; the scrape of furniture against the floor, the clink of ceramic. Guy played with the thin penknife, flicked it open, closed, open. Something heavy hit the wall. Closed. Someone was crying. Open.

Then it was quiet.

Again, he undid the latch with his knife and opened the window. The room was as he’d left it previously: a wreck. Luke had since tried to pull the curtains away from the window, but only managed to popped one or two rings and left the rest sagging. His journals on floor, pages torn out and crumpled. His workbooks scattered. Luke had pushed his bed to the far side of the room, where he slept now, balled on top of his comforter. He did not stir when Guy began to tidy the room, filling the wastebasket and righting the chair, the tray, the glass.

He did not even stir when Guy sat on his bed, flipped his penknife open and closed pensively, reached over and pressed it against Luke’s throat. Guy imagined the knife to be cold, like that spot behind his ear the ice had chilled.

Luke breathed. Guy watched his chest rise and fall.

When Luke woke the following morning and rubbed at his eyes, his room had reassembled itself.

 

“I hate this,” Luke pouted, knocking on the table absently with his knuckles. “This is pointless.”

The audience hall had no audience that day, so Luke and Guy sat at the long table while Luke attempted to do his studies. Luke was about as willful as he was unwilling, however, and there was very little headway being made.

Guy said, “You shouldn’t be so quick to discount yourself.”

“I don’t even understand most of these words,” Luke said, and slid a little further down into his seat while he tented one of the textbooks.

“Well, that’s my fault, then,” Guy mused.

Luke sat up straight, suddenly angry. “It’s not your fault!” He scowled at Guy.

“It’s not?” Guy pulled a face. He was certain Luke would have agreed.

“No!” Luke insisted. “I have tutors. Why don’t they teach me this stuff?”

“There’s a lot of ground to cover. You forgot a lot of stuff.”

“Well there’s a lot of stuff I don’t need,” Luke told him matter-of-factly, and went through his pile of books. “Like this.” He tossed a mathematics text down the length of the table. “And this.” This time he threw a history account.

“Hey now,” Guy scolded, but there was no edge to it. He got up to collect the books. “I know you don’t feel like it now, but these things are important to know. And once you leave the manor, they’ll be pretty vital.”

Luke narrowed his eyes. “Do you know them?”

Guy paused to flip through the books himself. He thought sorely of his own aborted education, which continued on in candle-lit sessions with Pere, self-taught lessons from second-hand textbooks.

“Sure I do.”

Luke pouted some more. He coughed. “Then you should teach me so I don’t have to read these stupid books.”

“I don’t think I know it all well enough for that, Master Luke,” he said, absently, because he was reading now.

“Stop calling me that.”

“You got it, Master Luke.”

Luke glowered darkly, coughed into his elbow. When he realized he was being ignored and not made fun of, he said, “You could have them.”

Guy looked up. “What?”

“The books,” he gestured at them. “I’ll tell them I lost them.”

“I can’t take your books—“

“I can’t read them anyway,” he dismissed, and pillowed his head with his arms.

Guy was conflicted for a moment longer until Luke coughed again. He frowned. “Are you coming down with something?”

“No,” Luke said into his arms.

He set the books down, took off his gloves, and felt Luke’s forehead. “You’re a little warm,” he said. “How do you feel?”

Luke shrugged his hands away. “Fine.”

“Mm,” Guy audibly doubted.

“Lay off, jeez. I said I’m fine.”

Guy put up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, okay. Are you going to study or sit there being a grouch all day?”

“No,” he said, and all but slid out of his chair. “I’m going to sleep.”

“I thought you said you were ‘Okay, jeez, lay off’?”

“I _am_ ,” Luke said loudly, and walked away in a huff.

Guy gathered up the study materials Luke had barely touched and carried them all back to the room, where Luke already lay in bed.

“You should tell me what words you’re having trouble with,” Guy said, placing the stack of texts on his desk. “I’ll help you out with them.”

Luke grunted. Guy, feeling that he was being dismissed, went to the door.

“Wait,” Luke said into his pillow. “You forgot your books.”

“I think you’re just trying to get out of studying.”

“No I’m not!”

“I think you’re trying a little bit to get out of studying,” Guy amended. Luke threw the pillow at him, but he closed the door before it could hit him.

Predictably, Luke came down with a fever the next morning.

“I told you you were coming down with something,” Guy told him, setting the breakfast tray across his lap.

“Shut up!” Luke groaned miserably, sniffing. “You probably gave it to me, ugh.”

“I don’t carry diseases. You got this all on your own.” Then he added, “And don’t insult the person who’s giving you your meals.”

“’M not hungry anyway,” he said, sinking further into his bed.

“You slept through dinner last night. You have to eat something,” Guy said. Luke grunted, stirred his soup around absently. “Why don’t I help you with those words now?” He got up, shuffled through the books he’d left on the desk the previous day. “Which one was giving you trouble?” Luke didn’t answer. “Luke.”

“I don’t wanna,” Luke mumbled. “There’s no point.”

“What do you mean there’s no point?” Guy continued to look through the books.

“I’m never going to understand anyway,” Luke said into his soup.

Guy stopped. “Why not?”

He fidgeted, grew even redder than his fever had made him. “Because I’m not smart.”

“That’s not true.”

“That’s what everyone thinks.”

“You have a lot to catch up on, is all. You just need some practice.”

“I don’t want to!” Luke shouted, and then coughed, and then glowered. “I don’t want to.”

Guy sighed and cast an eye across the desk. The notebooks that had pages ripped from them. The diaries which had become a chore to get Luke to write in. He thought about Duke Fabre’s dismissal of them. The Duchess, meaning well, greeting Luke with a tight hug and asking him if his memory was doing well. Did he remember anything.

“If you finish your soup, Luke,” he began, flipping absently through pages. “I’ll make these books disappear, huh?”

Luke squinted at him, seemed to think this was a good deal, and slurped at his soup.

“You should have done that in the first place,” he told Guy. “This way you’ll just know everything for me.”

Guy laughed. “You might not always have me on hand.”

“You said! You said you’d be here when you’re twenty-four.”

“Oh, so I guess I’m under contract until then, huh. Quick, what’s twenty plus thirteen? I need to know what I got myself into.”

Luke threw his spoon at him. “It’s thirty-three!”

On his way back to the kitchen to drop off dishes, Guy hid Luke’s pile of books under his bed.

Luke’s fever peaked that evening and refused to drop. Mostly he listed, burning, eyes half-lidded, in bed. Guy read things out of books he found interesting: Did you know Daath has the largest underground bunker in Auldrant? That the city of Grand Chokmah is surrounded by water on all four sides?

“How,” Luke croaked.

“Hmm?” Guy looked up.

He coughed. “How is it surrounded by so much water?”

“Well, it’s by the ocean.”

“What’s the ocean like?”

“It’s—“ and he stopped. Luke blinked sleepily at him. How to explain something like the ocean to someone who’s never seen it. “It’s a giant pool of water. Too salty to drink. Bigger than you can see, deeper than you can swim.”

“No way, you’re lying.”

“I’m not! You’ll see it one day.”

“Okay, but I still don’t believe you.” Luke closed his eyes, breath rattling in his chest.

“You want to go to sleep?”

“No.”

Guy took the cloth from Luke’s forehead, dipped it in cool water again, rang it, and replaced it. He said, “I think you should go to sleep.” Luke made a vague noise, eyes still closed. “I’ll start reading out of your math book.” Luke groaned, turned over.

When he went quiet and his wheezes evened out, Guy felt his cheeks. He was hot; the fever wasn’t breaking, his breathing wasn’t getting easier, and he had no appetite.

Guy smoothed Luke’s bangs over his forehead. “Maybe it’s time we got you to the doctor.”

That required going to the Duke’s room and carefully choosing the words with which to say that the Duke had not done a good job of taking care of his son, however.

The knock he placed on the Duke’s door was sharp, urgent, and not at all how he intended.

“Enter,” came the response.

Guy steeled himself and entered the Duke’s quarters with a bow. “Pardon the interruption, sir,” he said. “It’s about Young Master Luke.”

Duke Fabre waved his hand, somewhere in between an acknowledgement and an invitation to continue speaking. “Yes, how is he,” he said in a decidedly uninterested way. He sat at his desk, penning something lengthy.

“It’s been about 48 hours and his fever hasn’t broken,” Guy told him. “I’d like to get him to a doctor. I’m no expert, but—“

“Then why should I be listening to you about the state of my son’s health?” the Duke interrupted, not looking up. The pen scratched at the paper.

“Forgive me, sir,” Guy said carefully. “I don’t mean to press the issue. But I really do think he needs a doctor.”

“If I bring in someone else to watch over my son,” the Duke stopped writing. “Then what did I hire you for?”

Guy picked a spot at the back of the Duke’s head to stare at and said, “My apologies, sir.”

The writing resumed. “Luke will be fine. The Score said nothing about this illness. It’s nothing but a common cold; he should have it in him to overcome that. In fact, it may do him some good.”

There was no sound between them but the sound of the pen on paper. What was he writing about, Guy wondered, what if he did it now, took out the middleman, what would the Duke’s last recorded words be?

Duke Fabre turned his head. “Do you have something else to tell me?” he asked.

“No sir,” Guy said. “Thank you for your time.”

Outside the Duke’s quarters, Guy stood with his hand on the doorknob. He couldn’t get the sound of the pen writing on the paper out of his head.

An incessant scrawl. Bad people. What was the ocean like?

He let go of the Duke’s doorknob.

When he got back to Luke’s room, Luke turned over and said, foggily, “Where’d you go?”

Guy sighed, picked up a book, and sat down on Luke’s bed. “Tried to convince your father to take you to a doctor, but he wouldn’t go for it. Said you could take it on your own.”

Something like pride flashed in Luke’s eye. “Well, Father’s right,” Luke said, only coughing a little. “I’m fine. I don’t need a doctor.”

Pity how Luke could only be the recipient of his Father’s confidence when he was laid up in bed.

“Well,” Guy said. “You need someone better than me.”

“No I don’t,” Luke told him. His confidence was an unwarranted, brazen thing. He never had any hesitation. Did he teach him that, Guy wondered.

Guy held the book between his palms, his back facing Luke, and looked out the window. “Hey Luke, can I ask you something.”

Luke said, “What?”

“That sword that’s in the entrance hall. You ever thought about it before?”

“What are you talking about?” Luke said, and turned over. “I don’t remember any sword.”

He laughed. “Nevermind.”

 

The time came when it was determined that Luke was self-sufficient enough, and Guy was no longer allowed in Luke’s room, except to deliver meals and perhaps wake him in the mornings. Natalia sometimes came over and Luke would always be in a bad mood after she pestered him for an afternoon. When she left, he’d retreat to some little-travelled corner of the manor, and the maids would fret over his location, but Guy could always find him.

Presently, he was behind the copse of trees, partially hidden under a patch of bushes.

“Natalia took it out of you, huh,” Guy said, prodding Luke with a foot. Luke, facedown, grunted.

Luke turned his head. “She only ever wants to talk about things I can’t remember! Blah blah citizens, blah blah proposal, blah blah Kimlasca blah.”

“She’s just trying to find common ground.”

“I don’t want to find common ground. I want her to stop asking me to marry her.” Guy snorted. “Guess what Father told me, though?” Luke rose, suddenly charged.

“I’m gonna have a new teacher. He’s going to teach me swords.”

Guy felt his stomach drop, and then tried to figure out why, because Van was, is, and always had been an ally to him. Of course he was coming back; he had always been Luke’s sword instructor in the past.

“Commandant Grants, huh?” Guy tried not to sound how he felt.

Luke looked at him funny. “How’d you know?”

“He’s been your sword instructor for quite some time, actually. He’ll remember you.”

“That’s what they told me.” Luke lay down on the ground again. “But I won’t remember him.”

When Van came, he greeted Luke with a solemn handshake and said, “Luke fon Fabre. I do have the pleasure.”

“But everyone says you’ve met me before,” Luke said, flattered but narrow-eyed.

“Indeed, you were my pupil, but I’ve been told you don’t remember any of our previous encounters. Shouldn’t we start over from the beginning, then?” He gave a smile, as if he were letting Luke in on a joke.

Luke radiated delight. “When can we start?”

When Luke tried to shoo him away, perhaps embarrassed, Guy said, “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll hang around for the lesson. Maybe I’ll pick something up for myself.” Luke pouted, but let him stay anyway.

Van was a remarkable actor. He did not even so much as look at Guy, who stood awkwardly behind Luke throughout the exchange, having shepherded him from his room. And why would he— he was Commandant Grants and Guy was only Guy Cecil, boy servant.

Guy found he was ill at ease, didn’t like when Van’s practice sword would swing up to clip Luke on the shoulder to correct his posture, but liked it less when Luke would jump to right himself, eager to do better than the last time. Watching them spar was like anticipating the guillotine, and Luke didn’t even smell the blood.

Van called an end to their first lesson when Luke took a tumble in the middle of charging him. He skinned his chin, but, cupping the blood with his hands, Luke declared, “Let’s keep going Master Van, I can keep at it.”

Van laughed hugely. “No, Luke, I think it might be time to retire for the day.”

“But you’ll be back soon, right, Master Van?” Luke made sure to ask.

Van said, “Most certainly.”

Before Guy could bustle Luke off to get cleaned up, Van put a hand on his shoulder and said, so that only he could hear, “Your patience is admirable, Master Gailardia.”

Over the sink, Guy washed up Luke’s chin, blood and water mixing on the porcelain into a dirty rust color.

“Master Van is so cool,” Luke kept saying. “I can’t believe he’s going to be my teacher from now on.”

“Hold this,” Guy told him, giving him a cloth to soak up the blood. “Put pressure on it. Yeah, Commandant Grants is…he’s something else.”

“I can’t believe!” Luke continued, taking the cloth into his own hands.

Guy examined his charge’s face. “That’s going to bruise,” he concluded.

Luke grinned like he’d won a prize. “Definitely worth it.”

Guy turned the faucet off and let the water drip off his hands.

 

There was one night Guy came back very late from a week-long expedition the Duchess had sent him on, picking his way through ports and getting salty on the barges. It was a freedom he enjoyed, but it always felt a little like he was a hound given slack on a leash.

He fell into his bed without properly undressing at all and in moments of hitting the bed, he drifted into a dreamless sleep.

Then someone was prodding him, shoving his shoulder until he started awake. He turned over and Luke was standing over him, kneading his knuckles into Guy’s arm.

“Luke,” he choked out. “What—?”

The light clicked on, a dim circle across the room, and Pere put on his glasses. His hand hovered near the bedside drawer. Inside it he kept a knife that he sharpened after dark. Guy gestured a placating hand towards him.

“You came back and you didn’t tell me,” Luke growled.

“It was late?” Guy rubbed at his eyes. “You don’t need me to tuck you into bed, do you?”

Even in the amber-bottled light, Guy could see Luke turn red. “Shut up!” He yelled, with no regard to the hour of the night.

Guy shushed him. “You can’t be in here, Young Master.”

Luke gave him a narrow-eyed look. “I can be where I want.”

“It’s not proper,” Guy articulated for him. He swung himself out of bed, noted his dress, and tucked in his shirt. “You can’t just come into the servant’s quarters, it’s—not proper.”

“I don’t care,” Luke said. “You were supposed to let me know when you got back!”

Guy groaned. “We need to get you back to your room.”He ushered Luke out the door, and when he protested, Guy all but shoved him. He looked over his shoulder to see that Pere had not taken his hand away from the drawer.

“Just you hope Ramdas isn’t on patrol tonight,” he said, closing the door to his own room behind him. He had Luke by the shoulders and was steering him down the hallway. It was perhaps the first time he’d realized how tall Luke was becoming. Long had the day passed when he could lift him up and carry him back to his room, protesting and kicking his legs the whole way.

“I didn’t see him,” Luke huffed.

“I’m sure you didn’t,” Guy yawned. “What are you even doing up?”

“I was waiting for you.”

“I would have come by in the morning, Master Luke.”

“Stop calling me master!”

The window to Luke’s room was open and, because he thought there was less chance of the two of them being discovered, he had them enter the room that way. Luke pitched over head first, hit the floor, and bounded up before Guy could have even hefted himself onto the lip.

“Promise me you won’t come into the servant’s quarters again, Master Luke,” Guy was saying as he came through the window. “If your Father found out—“

“I said stop calling me that!”

He gestured with open palms, emptily. “I’m your servant. It’s not appropriate for me to call you anything else.”

“I don’t care! I don’t want to be called Master all the time.”

Guy forced a long sigh out, collapsed backwards in Luke’s desk chair. “Why’s that?”

Luke flopped down on his bed. “Natalia gets to call me by my name and I don’t even like her.”

“Natalia is the crowned princess of Kimlasca.”

“And you’re my best friend,” he said. “So you’re not going to call me Young Master or Master Luke or anything.”

He ran a hand through his hair and was grateful for the darkness because he felt his ears burn. “Master Luke—“

“Nope!” Luke plugged his ears and closed his eyes.

“Mas—“

“Not going to listen!”

There was a long moment of silence in which Guy sat with his hand to his forehead. He felt travel-worn and achey, and he tried to conjure up either irritation or anger but found that he had no fuel for it. He wondered in the darkness when this place had become so comfortable. Wondered how often he had sat here in this room and been needed, been necessary. Wondered when it happened that he’d exchanged the title murderer for best friend.

Luke opened an eye to make sure Guy was still there and dropped his hands.

“I was kidding,” he said. “I’ll listen. But you have to call me Luke.”

Guy walked over to the bed and gave Luke a shove.

“Hey!”

“That’s for waking me up. I’ll see you in the morning, Luke.”

Back in his own room, Guy flopped down into his bed for the second time that night.

Pere, in the darkness, said warmly, “The Young Master missed you a great deal.”

Guy laughed into his pillow. “The cross I must bear,” he managed sleepily.

 

Years later, on the road, all seven members of their party exhausted from their urgent and relentless travels, Guy woke when Luke did.

Most of the time he stared at the ceiling, his fingers laced on his stomach, and listened to Luke’s breathing try to even out. Sometimes Luke cried. The bed shook.

While they washed their faces in the morning, sharing a small inn’s bathroom, he asked what did he dream about last night? When Luke was groggy with sleep or lack of, sometimes he’d answer honestly. I dreamt I killed a man but didn’t do it right, he didn’t die right away, and I couldn’t find my sword so I put my hands over his nose and mouth and waited. I dreamt it was one of you that got hurt and I tried to put all the blood back in you. I dreamt it was me I killed and it was me that I put my hands over my nose and mouth and waited. Other times he’d say, Nothing.

Guy learned to be a light sleeper.

 

Luke stuttered awake, groped for the wall beside him, and, finding it, folded into himself. Guy, facing the opposite wall, estimated it to be one or two in the morning.

He waited for Luke to settle, to come back down from his nightmare, but instead his breaths got shorter and quicker and he did not, as usual, seem to be composing himself. He seemed to be able to fit twice as many breaths in a moment as he should be able to, and they came thin, shallow.

Guy turned over, called, “Luke?”

Luke didn’t answer. The mattress sighed several times as Guy rose. He went to Luke’s bed, leaned over his quaking bent shape and repeated his name. Touched his shoulder.

“It’s okay,” he said, “Luke, it’s okay. You’re safe.”

Luke rattled in his skin and cried without blinking.

Guy put his hand on the back of Luke’s neck, brought his head next to his own. “You’re having a panic attack, it’s okay.” He unknotted the hand that clutched at his shirt and held it. The heartbeat in his palm was erratic. “Just breathe, try doing one at a time.”

The tendons of Luke’s neck worked under Guy’s hand. He thought about that night he’d put the knife to his throat, this very throat, and how he couldn’t do it, not to this boy, not even if it meant that his father and mother and sister were ashamed of him, that he didn’t have enough mettle in him to carry out revenge he swore when he was six years old.

Inhale, squeeze Luke’s hand. Exhale, let it go. Again and again, until Luke started to do it, too, until he finally stopped breathing like he was afraid to slip underwater.

Even after Luke remembered how to breathe, they sat there without speaking for a long time. Luke trembled with aftershock. His eyelids fluttered and he stared at the end of the bed.

Finally, Luke said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I’ll be stronger.”

“You’re plenty strong.”

His fisted his hands into his eyes. “No, I’m not, I’m scared.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re not strong.”

“It does, though,” he hissed. “It does.”

Guy continued to look at the same spot at the foot of the bed. “If it didn’t affect you at all, Luke, I don’t know what kind of person that’d make you.” Luke breathed.

He almost said something. When he didn’t, Guy continued, “You’re not a soldier. You’re not supposed to be on the battlefield. It’s okay to be afraid. But you can’t let it kill you. You’re letting it kill you.”

A floorboard creaked in the next room over.

“What about you?” Luke turned his head but didn’t quite look at him.

“What about me?”

“You’re not a soldier, either.”

How could he tell Luke that he’d spent years dreaming of how to kill, how he might hold the sword, how he might inflict the worst hurt.

“No, I’m not.”

“Why aren’t you afraid?”

Guy scratched his ear. “I spent a lot of time convincing myself that I could kill.”

Luke went quiet. He said, “Did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Convince yourself.”

Guy put his hand on top of Luke’s head, mussed his hair, and said, “You should try to go to sleep.”

Luke said, put out, “Yeah, I—I guess I should. I don’t want to slow us down. But, I mean, would you…” He shrugged, wouldn’t look Guy in the eye, gestured in his direction. All that brazenness he had as a child had evaporated and now Luke was just chronically under-slept and over-eager to make a martyr of himself.  
“I’ll be here,” Guy saved him from asking.

 

After it was all over, Guy went back to Baticul and told the Duke and Duchess that neither of their sons were coming back. The Duchess cried, the Duke held his head, and Guy went to Luke’s room.

The maids had made it so much tidier than it had ever been when Luke lived out of it. The sheets on Luke’s bed were crisp, tucked, and so white they hurt to look at in the sun. Guy pulled the covers back. He sat on the edge of the bed while the breeze churned the drapes.


End file.
